Mosaic Science

Mixing and matching potent drugs to alter consciousness and eliminate pain is a delicate medical art, and one that doesn’t work equally well on everyone — but because the same drugs that knock you out also impede memory formation, you might never know.

A play-by-play of the Broaden study, a clinical trial of a promising new treatment for depression, highlights how unexpected variables can sink clinical trials prematurely — especially when sponsors pull the plug early on treatments that gain effectiveness over time.

Gaia Vince visits Yale University’s Human Cooperation Lab to explore how we can redesign social networks in ways that will help “further our extraordinary impulse to be nice to others even at our own expense.”

“Sleep, routine and daylight. It’s a simple formula, and easy to take for granted. But imagine if it really could reduce the incidence of depression and help people to recover from it more quickly.” At Mosaic, Linda Geddes investigates whether monitored sleep deprivation and chronotherapy can succeed where pharmaceutical antidepressants fail.

Between reliable traditional remedies for malaria and diabetes to used motor oil dressed up as an immune booster, Ghana’s herb market generates millions annually and provides 70% of Ghana’s citizens with most of their healthcare. Regulators are trying to deal with the massive scale of its herbal drugstores, clinics and claims without destroying the system.

“The kind of multigenerational drug use he was describing was not uncommon in their town, Austin, in southern Indiana. It’s a tiny place, covering just two and a half square miles of the sliver of land that comprises Scott County. An incredible proportion of its 4,100 population—up to an estimated 500 people—are shooting up. It was here, starting in December 2014, that the single largest HIV outbreak in U.S. history took place. Austin went from having no more than three cases per year to 180 in 2015, a prevalence rate close to that seen in sub-Saharan Africa.”